In 1995, Kees Moeliker heard a loud bang coming from the Natural History Museum Rotterdam’s new wing. He knew exactly what it was. [ted_talkteaser id=1703] A curator at the museum, Moeliker had gotten used to the sound of birds hitting the glass exterior of the new wing, and had even taken to stuffing the dead birds for the museum’s collection. But, as Moeliker explains in this humorous TED Talk, the duck that met its death on this particular day “changed his life.”

Just how the duck qualified as a life-changing event sounds like an April Fools’ Day joke. It is not.

Soon after the male mallard duck died, a live male duck from the same species approached it, mounted it, and — to put it in layperson’s terms — humped it for over an hour. Amazed, Moeliker did what any curious biologist would do:…